Here is the latest on Tysons redevelopment:
Remaking Tysons Corner
into the second city of Washington will take a lot more than a new
Metro line and a downtown of tightly clustered buildings designed for
walking. It will take almost $15 billion in new roads and public
transportation.
Even in this age of sticker shock, that's a lot of money for a local project. You'll recall my earlier prediction that Tysons will get the road widenings but not enough of the other changes needed to make it a walkable downtown; the road widenings will on net make things worse. Call me an apologist for suburbia if you wish, but I sooner view myself as an apologist for public choice theory. Some parts of the redesign will be more popular than others and we will get a very unbalanced mix of reforms. This is indeed what I predict:
The numbers also have prompted some proponents of dense development in
Tysons to argue that if the county pushes too many costly road
improvements and makes room for more cars, the vision could unravel.
To simply insist that it "should be different," or to charge that I do not spend enough time criticizing interstate highway subsidies, is to miss the public choice point. Now that the stimulus is up and running, you can see road widenings all over NoVa and they will be finished. Who will put up the money for the rest of Tysons reform?
For funding, Fairfax officials say, they will look to the Obama
administration, which is committed to subsidizing growth projects in
urban areas. They hold out little hope from the Virginia Department of
Transportation, which this year slashed the county allocation for
secondary roads to zero. Given the millions of dollars Northern
Virginia has gotten for big projects such as the HOT lanes and new
Woodrow Wilson Bridge, "More state funding is pretty much politically
doomed," said Kathy Ichter, the county's chief of transportation
planning.
Stay tuned…
The prediction that road widening will only make things worse is correct– the problem is that there is no scenario in which things get ‘better’, i.e., in which congestion is reduced. Unless Tysons Corner simply chokes to death, there will be greater congestion in all cases; the only question is the degree to which the congestion will have an urban, rather than suburban character. My own opinion is that urban congestion is ‘better’ than suburban congestion– but in any case, that’s the choice.
The folks at greater greater washington find the $15 billion figure ludicrous: http://tinyurl.com/y9fujpy
The $15B does appear to include the cost of extending Orange Line from Vienna past Fair Oaks Mall out to Centreville. It’s also an estimate that runs through 2030. It’s not entirely unreasonable.
The Greater Greater Washington people also had posts in favor of a taxi medallion system for DC, so I don’t really trust them on economics.
Ok, whether or not the $15 billion is Tyson’s redevelopment or for all of Fairfax County, I think we can apply past experience and say that the true figure will be $75 billion (same dollars) or more, with, in the end, far less actual useful infrastructure than expected.
I smell money illusion here. Seven billion will not be spent until after 2030. These projects would almost certainly go overbudget without proper controls, but 7 billion after 2030 is not 7 billion 2009.
On another note, if peak oil is true, and I think it is, America will need to move to a system where we get energy for transportation from the grid rather than the pump. I’m a peak oil doomer, saying billions will die because of it, but I do think we need to move towards systematically shifting our transportation structure little by little.
Think of it this way, the price tag is so high because the infrastructure at Tyson’s corner is based around unplanned, circuitous rural roads. While it looks like a lot now, the oil economics of 2030 and beyond will strongly favor higher density. Doing the work now, with today’s oil and material’s prices, could pay a lot of benefits down the road.
I agree Craig.
Especially with our massive debt and massive financial overcommitments. But its all part of the drunken sailor = prosperity mentality.
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